Ada Friedman paints her dancing mind. She draws on interior and exterior research to make her paintings. In her studio routine, transparency, time, ritual, and storytelling work in tandem with oil and acrylic paint, colored pencil, pastel, papers, Mylar, handwritten text, and more. Through movement, she connects the mapping of space in a painting to gestures of the body–like pacing–linking drawing and painting intrinsically to performance.
Friedman has had recent solo and two-person exhibitions at David Peter Francis, NYC (2024); Kendra Jayne Patrick, Bern, Switzerland (2022); and The University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, TN (2022). Her plays or time-based paintings have been staged in NYC at Essex Flowers, All Saints Church, and Safe Gallery. She holds an MFA from Bard College in Painting and a BA in Studio Art from the University of Vermont. She was a Visiting Lecturer in Painting and Drawing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2021-22) and, most recently, a Lecturer in Art at Connecticut State Community College Housatonic in Bridgeport. She has participated in residencies including Shandaken Projects, NY, and Clay Break at The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She appeared in “The Diary Issue,” the inaugural edition of Mutt Art Review in summer 2025. She was a founding member of Essex Flowers, an artist-run cooperative gallery in NYC. Friedman lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and the Texas Hill Country.